Niels Bohr Library & Archives

09/02/2026

📸 NBLA has been the longtime holders of a remarkable photograph collection: photos from physicist Hertha Sponer’s personal album from her time at University of Göttingen. AV Archivist Elizabeth Wood embarked on a project this year to rectify its place in our archives; for decades, this collection has been labeled as part the James Franck collection, and the metadata has been missing valuable information and context about many women in the album. Now, that metadata and other information is restored, resituating the photo album as a record of Hertha Sponer’s experience, not James Franck’s. Read the full story: https://www.aip.org/library/ex-libris-universum/hertha-sponer-at-gottingen

The date of this post also marks Hertha Sponer’s birthday: she was born on September 1, 1895. Happy 131st birthday! 🎈

Hertha Sponer was best known for her work in spectroscopy and her decades-long career at Duke University physics department, as well as her distinction of being one of only three women to earn Habilitation (the right to teach and hold a professorship) in physics in Germany before World War II.

September Photos of the Month

08/28/2026

A year ago, the Niels Bohr Library & Archives launched an initiative inviting scientists to submit their digital photos for our collections. Since then, dozens of new images have helped us document the human side of 21st-century science, including the passion, collaboration, and occasional silliness that comes with it.

This month, we’re sharing some of our favorites. Check out the blog post photos and full descriptions: https://www.aip.org/library/ex-libris-universum/theres-a-place-for-you-in-the-archives

Pictured: A van used by IceCube to transport people and supplies at the South Pole. The wheels have been replaced by Matrax tracks. Credit: Spencer Klein

August Photos of the Month The Faces of the Physical Sciences

08/18/2026

Before she led a distinguished crystallography career, Kathleen Lonsdale was Kathleen Yardley—a young scientist in her early twenties already making a name for herself through meticulous research.

The AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives recently acquired three rare offprints of papers Yardley published in 1925 and 1926 while working with Nobel Prize-winning crystallographer William Henry Bragg. Published under her name alone, the papers offer a glimpse of her growing independence as a researcher and the X-ray crystallography techniques that would define her career.

Just a few years later, Lonsdale would help settle a scientific debate by demonstrating that the benzene ring is planar. She went on to become an expert on diamond structures, lead Britain’s first university crystallography department, and, alongside Marjory Stephenson, become one of the first two women elected to the Royal Society in 1945.

Read the post by historian Dr. Melinda Baldwin:

The AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives recently acquired three rare offprints of early papers by the crystallographer Kathleen Yardley Lonsdale (1903-71), one of the first two women inducted into the Royal Society of London. These offprints, which are separate printings of individual articles from a....

08/06/2026

In January 1978, American Astronomical Society President Margaret Burbidge made what seemed like a routine announcement: the AAS would no longer hold meetings in states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Instead, the decision sparked months of controversy, including accusations of misconduct, threats of mass resignations, and even an ultimatum involving the IRS.

When this project began, SPS intern Amelie Heying expected a small but fun dive into archival records, but it quickly became clear that the ERA boycott was one of the most dramatic episodes in the Society's history.

The archives offer a fascinating look at how questions of equity, governance, and professional responsibility shaped the scientific community in the late 1970s.

Read the full story here:

How the Women’s Rights Movement Collided with the AAS

07/29/2026

K. Renee Horton is a physicist and engineer whose career spans materials science, physics, aerospace, and advocacy for disability inclusion in STEM. As a Black woman with hearing loss, she has spoken openly about the barriers disabled scientists can face—and about the importance of making space where more people can thrive.

In 2024, NBLA's intern, Kai Hostetter-Habib, conducted an oral history interview with Dr. Horton. In it, she reflects on her early childhood growing up in Louisiana, her hearing loss diagnosis, and how that impacted the trajectory of her life. She discusses her experience as a non-traditional student, going back to college after a ten-year break with three children, and the racism she dealt with in the South. She recounts how she got involved with the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP) and her two-year tenure as NSBP president from 2016 to 2018. Dr. Horton also goes through her career progression at NASA, from material test engineer to the Space Launch Systems quality engineer to Airworthiness Deputy. She concludes by talking about her disability rights advocacy, her mentoring, the children's books she authored, and the importance of her family.

Read about Kai's experience talking to Dr. Horton: https://www.aip.org/library/the-power-of-oral-histories

📷 NASA - Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

07/22/2026

Abraham Nemeth was a mathematician whose work transformed access to science and mathematics for blind students and researchers. Best known for developing the Nemeth Braille Code for mathematics and science notation, he helped open technical fields to countless learners. Not every scientific breakthrough comes from a lab bench; some reshape who gets to enter the lab in the first place.

📷 University of Detroit

07/17/2026

Born in 1819, Eunice Foote was an early climate science pioneer whose 1856 experiments showed that carbon dioxide and water v***r absorb heat. If you’d like the full story, AIP’s Initial Conditions podcast devoted an episode to her life, work, and long-overdue rediscovery. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. https://www.aip.org/library/initial-conditions-episode-1-eunice-foote-a-once-forgotten-climate-science-pioneer

07/15/2026

18th century astronomer John Goodricke is best known for his observations of the variable star Algol. He was the first to offer a mechanism to explain why stars vary in apparent magnitude, suggesting that Algol is what is now known as an eclipsing binary.

Goodricke was also deaf. His work reminds us that disabled scientists have always been part of scientific discovery, even when the historical record ignores them.

📷 James Scouler - Original pastel in the possession of the Royal Astronomical Society London; see the Science Photo Library. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons.

07/14/2026

Carl A. Rouse would have been 100 years old 🎂

A physicist and solar researcher whose career broke barriers, Rouse was the first African American to earn a PhD in physics from (1956). His love of science was spurred by an interest in photography and model airplanes as a child, and he gravitated towards physics in high school. He entered the Army Training Reserves after high school, which sent him to to complete a civil engineering course. When he later had the choice to continue towards an engineering degree or pivot to physics, he chose to start over at Case Institute of Technology as a physics student.

After his PhD, Rouse headed to to work in the Theoretical Division, where he began his research on his "High-Z" model of the sun, a project he worked on through his career. He later moved to in San Diego, CA, where he was eventually granted access to to continue his research. He was elected as an APS Fellow in 1968.

After his passing, Rouse’s impact continued through the Carl Rouse Fellowship, established by and Caltech to support undergraduate research, especially in astrophysics and gravitational-wave science.

Dr. Ronald Mickens collected biographical materials on Rouse for the 1998 exhibit “The African American Presence in Physics.” These materials, which include a 17-page autobiographical reflection written by Rouse, are now digitized and available on our repository. Check them out: https://bit.ly/4uYy1lH

📷 Lorraine Moxley-Rouse and Carl Rouse in at home in Del Mar, California. AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Dr. Rouse

📷 Dr. Carl A. Rouse at his home office, seated in front of the PC he uses to access the CRAY T90 at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Ronald E. Mickens Collection

07/10/2026

In celebration of Disability Pride Month, our July Photos of the Month looks at the remarkable life of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin through images from the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives. Hodgkin was a Nobel Prize-winning crystallographer who used X-ray techniques to reveal the structures of molecules such as penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin. She also lived for most of her adult life with rheumatoid arthritis, which began when she was only 24. Over time, the disease affected her hands and feet, limiting her mobility and causing chronic pain, but it did not keep her from her research or from teaching, traveling, organizing, and mentoring.

Read the full post on the Ex Libris Universum blog:

July Photos of the Month